“Leadership days”? These would involve rearranging the organisation for a day so that managers can relinquish control to an employee one level down in the hierarchical structure. This will enable that employee to get a feel for what the manager’s job entails and vice versa. While this tests the foundations of management, it could also promote trust, build competence, create autonomy and break down bureaucracy in an organisation.

Problem

All organisations are structured with hierarchical levels with executive management sitting at the core of operations. These executive managers have the utmost power vested in them by the board of directors and that power filters down into the organisation as we descend thought that leadership structure.

One of the key problems with this kind of approach is that it is the first step to creating the problem of groupthink. Subordinates tend to follow the direction set by the manager directly above them in the hierarchical structure because they feel like they have less experience or do not have the skills to perform at that level. They follow this direction blindly without questioning its relevance, and in essence just follow orders. Secondly, Ideas that are not in line with management’s way of thinking are often brushed aside because of their impracticality to the business. Of course this is not always the case, but the way in which organisations are structured gives room for this kind of behaviour especially with less skilled managers.

Added to this, sometimes managers get appointed without the knowledge of the groundwork that goes into the lower levels of employment. There are often complaints from employees that managers expect too much without considering the time and effort that goes into carrying out various tasks. The reverse is also true where employees at lower levels do not understand the amount of work that managers do simply because they too are not exposed to management activities.

In Summary a hierarchical management structure leads to:

Groupthink

Feelings of inferiority in employees

Biased viewpoints

Lack of knowledge of job functions

Solution

The suggestion is to implement “Leadership days”. It involves dropping the person at the highest level of management in a team to the lowest level in the team and shifting each other person one level up in the management chain. With regard to teams where there are many people at the same level of management, each person would have their turn to be shifted up on different occasions when the leadership day takes place. At the end of that day each team would have to come together for a review meeting. The team as a whole would be responsible for rating the performance of each individual as well as the team as the whole unit anonymously. Each individual would also at this point be able to identify key problems (from their point of view), solutions to problems and the ways in which they were able to carry out their tasks for the day. It is important to stress that the process is a learning exercise and that failures must be addressed as a learning platform.

Practical Impact

The practical impact as it is relevant to the points mentioned above:

Groupthink

By disrupting the regular order of the functioning of the team, an environment where groupthink tends to occur can be eliminated. This would be mainly due to the effect empowering those employees who in their ordinary role in the team would not make their viewpoint known for fear of it causing tension.

Feelings of inferiority in employees

By pushing an employee into a position where they have to take control with no effect of repercussions besides their own failure, that employee will be able to identify those areas in which they can improve their own skills. As a result, they can become confident in being able to make management decisions. This will also assist management in the organisation to identify those leaders who can excel and those which need to be trained to become future leaders.

Biased viewpoints

Due to the impact of transferring decision making authority to those individuals one level lower in the management hierarchy, the opportunity for new solutions to known problems exists. By being able to implement such solutions, the employee will be able to assess the impact on their own and provide feedback to the team on the relevance and effectiveness of their solution.

Lack of practical knowledge of job functions

While each member is in the position for the leadership day they will be able to get practical knowledge of the job function that they have been assigned to. This will assist managers to get a view of what subordinates work with as well as subordinates in gauging the role of management. Management will also be exposed to the work of those employees lower down in the chain of command.

First Steps

Leadership days must be done for each team but does not need to be implemented across the organisation at the same time. Pilots of “Leadership days” can be run in small departments to flush out teething problems with the proposed solution. These teething problems could include ways of getting around the challenges of implementing “Leadership days”. Once these problems have been addressed, the solution can be rolled out to the organisation at large.

Credits

The boy scouts movement, especially the Patrol Leader’s Training Unit (PLTU) where I was introduced to the concept of a rotation leadership.

This is a very interesting idea, as it would definitely be a good learning and eye opening experience for everyone involved. I absolutely agree that this is something that needs to be addressed, having to “learn on the job” and experience viewpoints directly from the right perspective. However I am wondering if about the costs and benefits in implementing this program. For example, as I work at a commercial bank, implementing this would be a logistical nightmare, especially authorizing people with access of information, security rights, upper management contacts, public media exposure, day-to-day responsibilities. For me, thinking about transferring responsibilities, explaining, and even “getting people up to speed” to make this one-day transition would take more than one day to accomplish. I think I understand your reasoning as too how to why this would be beneficial, but from my perspective there seems to be a lot more negatives that may arise. Do you think a simulation would be more appropriate or even training courses or case studies that portray the actual event instead would be an appropriate idea? Again, I think I am thinking in terms of a financial institutions – and as DLee mentioned below – is it wise to constantly change management, and in this case, a one day “administration”? I think this is definitely worth investigating more into as many companies already have integrated “rotational programs,” however I believe those are more on the terms of developing skills in different sectors of a company. I can definitely see this be extremely beneficial in a more socially involved company, however, do you have any insight how it might apply to a financial institution in terms of costs?

Thank you for your comment and I agree that the cost implication could be a major hurdle in implementing such a policy and as I do not work in the financial services industry I do not know the dynamics of your industry. I assume also that security rights in your organisation must have very strict controls but does your organisation have a succession plan and what happens in cases where a key management employee is on leave or unavailable?

I am a bit confused how changing one system, the organization structure, is going to bring about solution to the problem. I agree with you that groupthink is problem in many organizations, and we need to eliminate it as much as possible. Is it wise to constantly change management? the direction of the team/business? Each person may have their own idea how operations should be run. When would anything get accomplished if leadership kept changing?

Thank you for your comment, I believe that the key to any organisational plan is strategy and buy in from all employees into strategy. My suggestion might allude to an organisation where each member of the company understands the organisation's strategy. I think that maybe changing leadership might bring to the fore different methods of accomplishing the company's strategy and also allow a wider spread of knowledge.

One of the inspirations for this idea was listening to a friend complain that their manager had no idea about the amount of work that goes into their job and just expected instant results in some instances.